i was an asshole.

and, now i'm a bitch.

in actual fact, i can't imagine anybody suggesting that i was ever a very nice person at all.

that's never been my shtick in any kind of way. really. i've always been kind of distant, brutally honest and not very concerned about offending people or hurting their feelings. i've never been very concerned about what other people think of me.

if you're stuck in the fallacy of biological determinism and need to come up with a tactic, i guess i'd have been better described as the mysterious, distant weirdo that blows by you and ignores you in some kind of reverse psychological ploy. but, it's a big stretch - the fact is that i really wasn't interested, and that not much has really changed.

i'm not saying that blowing up the mullahs is necessarily the right answer. i understand that if the united states wants to win in iran, it's going to be a difficult process - and the chances are higher that it will lose. this will harm the united states, certainly.

but, i'm not an american. i don't really care if you win.

so, what i'm saying is that i'm not going to oppose a strike on iran in the same way that i opposed a strike on iraq. i was absolutely opposed to iraq - it was based on false pretexts, and it was not a smart move for anybody, except maybe the saudis. iran is really a different animal, and if a very specific kind of scenario plays out, it could be of a large benefit to real democracy in the region.

i mean, if there's a country in the region that we can build a real democracy in, that country is iran. and, if you really want stability, what you want in the region is actually democracy.

i nailed hitchens on iraq at the time, and i'd nail him again. but, his problem wasn't his logic; his arguments made sense. he just had very, very bad information. it's an open question whether he took all these wrong facts at face value disingenuously or not; you'd think he'd have been smart enough to work it through, so accusations of dishonesty are pretty relevant. but, if his facts weren't wrong, his argument would have been solid. i know; this is circuitous and awkward, but it's true, nonetheless.

the relevant facts to make a right choice will come out in the course of a debate, if we're lucky enough to get one. i may still oppose it, but my mind is not as made up now as it was in 2003.

http://www.socialismtoday.org/215/iran.html

by contrast, the baath party in iraq was the consequence of arab socialism being perverted into stalinism, so the socialist forces were already in power, there. saddam hussein obviously wasn't much of a socialist, but his party was historically a socialist party. so, taking down the baath party opened up a space for the islamists.

and, for the ignorant or naive, i'll remind you that this is the nature of politics in the middle east and has been for years: it's socialists v islamists. that's the political spectrum. this shia v sunni thing is a conflict on the right, and was mostly created by the imperial occupation.

in iran, the islamists are in charge, so knocking them out should open up space for the socialists - and that's potentially a good thing.
 
http://socialistresistance.org/the-iranian-revolution-socialism-and-theocracy/3826

now, do i think that if the empire goes in and topples the ayatollah that they'll set up a socialist state in replacement?

obviously not, no.

but, the way i'm approaching the question is not from a pacifist or pro-peace perspective. my interest is not to stop a war in iran. rather, what i'm asking is whether the forces of secularism, socialism and modernism are powerful enough in iran to take advantage of the chaos caused by the vacuum of power, in the way that al qaeada did in iraq. put another way: is the fantasy that the bush administration told you about iraq actually realistic when applied to iran? i think it's clear that it's more realistic; the question is whether it's realistic enough to back action to dismantle the regime, in the hopes that the socialists can seize power in the end.

but, the biggest problem in iran - and i've pointed this out before - is that the russians are already there. it's instantly a proxy war - it's korea, it's vietnam. and, even if the forces of modernism win in the end, you're looking at a thirty year war to get there.

so, i remain unconvinced that war is imminent.

but, i'm not necessarily opposed to it, and am certainly not opposed to it on the basis of being pacifist, if it is.

hey.

i'm a socialist.

that means i interpret the world through the lens of class conflict, and i support revolution everywhere i can, not that i want class harmony and world peace. those people are called conservatives.

so, solidarity, comrades. we will win, in the end, if we fight together.

iran may come off as relatively humane when compared to the saudis, but that shouldn't be used to erase or whitewash the iranian government's crimes against it's own people. iran remains a despotic state with a set of brutal, medieval laws that have created a horrendous humanitarian catastrophe, and any free thinking person should be supporting the overthrow of the iranian state by any means possible. this is a government that cannot be left in place, in the long run.

it's easy to pick sides when presented with a conflict of this nature, but this is a situation where nobody should be doing that.

a pox on both their houses.